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TWENTY-NINTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



five years, after which the grapes begin to deteriorate in quantity and in 

 quality, and eventually it is necessary to remove the vines in order to 

 plant the ground with something else for two, three, or four years, 

 when the raisin grape may be again planted and will have another 

 twenty-five years of life. Not so with the wine grape. Some vineyards 

 in the south of France are a hundred years old and produce well; 

 many individual vines are several hundreds of years old and still pro- 

 duce fruit. We find, even in our own State, that the raisin grape is 

 nearly always planted as an industry; the vineyards are planted and 

 cultivated intensely for the production of raisins. Our own older vine- 

 yards are growing less and less productive. The production of wine 

 grapes generally in nearly all parts of the world where they are pro- 

 duced is not a distinctive industry, but simply an adjunct to something 

 else. On every little farm in Italy and on almost every farm in France 

 and Spain you will find a little vineyard that produces wine, but it is 

 only an adjunct to something else. Nearly every man sits under his 

 own vine and fig-tree, every man makes his own barrel of wine, but 

 the land is also made to produce something to live upon as well as 

 something to drink. 



It has been said that in this great country, where almost every acre 

 of land will produce raisins and wine, we will soon overdo the produc- 

 tion of wines and raisins. I believe that the California Wine-Growers' 

 Association is insisting that there is already an overproduction of wine, 

 that there should be an effort made to stop the planting of grapes. It 

 is also said that there is now an overproduction of raisins. These mat- 

 ters, in my judgment, will adjust themselves. We haven't begun to 

 produce wine grapes. The whole State of California will produce wine 

 grapes, of an excellence and in an abundance that no other part of the 

 earth can equal. The American people have not become wine-drinkers, 

 but the great bulk of the people of the Old World are wine-consumers, 

 and the world will be our market. With our American market alone 

 there may be a temporary overproduction, but the market will adjust 

 itself, just as the production adjusts itself. Eventually we will have 

 the world for a market, and every hillside and valley in California will 

 be made to produce the wine grape as well as almost all the other fruits 

 produced in semi-tropical regions. The same as to the production of 

 raisins. There will be a time when our American market will not take 

 them, but there is comparatively a small part of the world that will 

 produce raisins. Right here in this great, broad, hot San Joaquin Valley 

 is the one ideal spot in which to produce raisins. Algeria produces a 

 few, Brazil may possibly produce a few, and there are other parts of 

 this western coast where you may produce a few raisins, but there is no 

 part of the world that will produce them in the perfection that we do 

 here, and there is no very great part of California outside of this valley 



